BT's NHL Season Preview: Edmonton Oilers

Coming into this season, the Oilers have an assortment of foreign and North American talent that could form into a fairly foreboding blue line.

First of all, I don’t care if Lubomir Visnovsky is undersized. A guy who puts up 40 points in a down-year, can put up a plus mark in four of the five seasons with the Kings (last year being the exception), and makes me think of drinking every time I try to spell his name is someone I want on this team—especially to compliment the stay-at-home presence of the ever-dependable Steve Staios, whose early years were mind-numbingly bogged down with terrible teams.

After that, we come to Mr. Separated Shoulder himself, Sheldon Souray. Granted, the Oilers aren’t paying his salary for him to show up for 26 games a season—but when Souray is in the lineup, he drastically changes the Oilers’ powerplay, with five of his 10 points last season coming with the man advantage. If Souray can be healthy this year, then the Oil’s PP unit gets a boost, and Mathieu Garon will have some help clearing out the front of his net.

Both Tom Gilbert and Denis Gregeshkov played excellently last year for the Oilers.  While both of them are on the way up, Ladislav Smid is looking to rebound from a rough ’07-08—and Theo Peckham may be looking to move up the pecking order of the Oilers’ defense, now that Syvret and Matt Greene have been sent packing.

I’m not here to "Garon"-tee anything

I won’t lie—I always love it when a goalie plays his way back into the spotlight.

So last season when I watched as Mathieu Garon emerged from the desolate landscape of Los Angeles, landed in Edmonton, and proceeded to assert himself as the starting netminder.

I loved all 47 games of it.

I’m sure Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers didn’t, but we’ll get to him in a minute.

The crazy thing about those 47 games, though? 26 of them were wins. That’s a winning percentage of 55 percent, which is just two percent less than Martin Brodeur's 57 percent.

Brodeur played in 77 games. Assuming Garon plays in 60 games—and doesn’t lose steam—he’d be on pace to land himself in the neighborhood of 33 wins—tying the Oilers with Calgary at 94 points.

The question then becomes whether Garon can shoulder the load for that much of a season, but one thing is for sure—Garon gives the Oilers the best chance at winning games since the 2006 incarnation of Dwayne Roloson.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love Dwayne Roloson, and there was a time (back long ago when I first thought Toronto should start rebuilding—say, 2006) that I thought the Leafs should make a ply for Rolo. 

He’s great as a tandem goaltender—ask Manny Fernandez. Rolo’s always posted great numbers—2.60 GAA and a .909 save percentage for his career—but aside from that run in 2006, he’s never blown anyone away as a starter. Now at his age (soon to be 39), the questions may start to arise as to whether Rolo can handle the backup job, depending on how he performs.

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